Young people not unduly enthusiastic over new mobile phone features

Three out of four 9 to 12-year-olds have their own handsets

print this

Children and youngsters take a relatively sanguine attitude towards the new mobile phone features on the market.
      "Service providers have invested great hopes in the additional features today's mobile phones are crammed with, but many of these services, such as watching entertainment on a mobile device, the consumers still find somewhat outlandish", says researcher Harri Ketamo.
      In addition to watching entertainment, other such mobile services include for example multimedia messaging and downloadable games.
      Ketamo, from the Pori unit of the Tampere University of Technology, leads a research project that studies young people's use of mobile communication services. The sample emphasis is on youngsters between the ages of 12 and 21, but children as young as nine have been included.
     
Schoolchildren seem to be the group most interested in the mobile services, even though they are also the group with the least money at their disposal.
      The study reveals, however, that even if the children had more money, they still would not consider multimedia messaging particularly important.
      Nevertheless, one in five children have at least experimented with sending multimedia messages from handset to handset, whereas a year ago the corresponding figure was only a couple of percent.
      Even so, three out of four young respondents said that their future use of the mobile phone would still be limited to normal phone calls and SMS text messaging.
      Ketamo believes the problem is that the service providers offer services on a far too general level. "Services should be specifically geared towards smaller target groups."
     
In the past twelve monthsr the number of handsets owned by children and young teens has increased by around 15 percent.
      According to Ketamo, the operators' price competition, with offers of free call-time, has encouraged parents to buy mobile phones for their children.
      Children's phone bills have stayed on a moderate level, partly thanks to account limits. The average monthly phone bill for 9-12-year-olds is EUR 15, whereas 13 to 15-year-olds use their handsets for EUR 20 per month.
      Of 9 to 12-year-olds, 75 percent have their own mobile handset. The corresponding percentages for the 13 to 15-year-old and over 15-year-old groupings are 85 and 95%. 


Previously in HS International Edition:
  High tide for mobile phone users in Finland seems evident (12.6.2002)

Helsingin Sanomat